BETWEEN THE LINES

What Obama cost you

Exclusive: Joseph Farah breaks down spending numbers leading U.S. to bankruptcy

Joseph Farah is founder, editor and chief executive officer of WND. He is the author or co-author of 13 books that have sold more than 5 million copies, including his latest, "The Restitution of All Things: Israel, Christians, and the End of the Age." Before launching WND as the first independent online news outlet in 1997, he served as editor in chief of major market dailies including the legendary Sacramento Union.

If you have any doubts that federal spending, which was out of control before Barack Obama took office, is now beyond comprehension, consider the following:

Inflation-adjusted per capita federal spending went up $822.90 from fiscal 2008 to fiscal 2012, according to official data from the U.S. Treasury and the Census Bureau.

Real federal spending also increased $2,437.64 per household between 2008 and 2012.

In constant 2012 dollars, the federal government spent $3,176,376,470,000 in 2008 and $3,538,446,000,000 in 2012, according to the U.S. Treasury. (The 2008 spending number was adjusted to 2012 dollars using the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator.)

The $3,176,376,470,000 the federal government spent in fiscal 2008 equaled $10,469.89 for each of the 303,381,938 people who lived in the United States that year. The $3,538,446,000,000 the federal government spent in fiscal 2012 equaled $11,292.79 for each of the 313,336,712 people who lived in the United States that year.

Over the past four years, the federal government has increased its spending on average by about another $206 each year for every man, woman and child in the country.

The $3,176,376,470,000 the federal government spent in fiscal 2008 equaled $28,586.39 per household. The $3,538,446,000,000 the federal government spent in fiscal 2012 equaled $31,024.03 per household. Thus from fiscal 2008 to fiscal 2012 inflation-adjusted federal spending per household increased by $2,437.64. That means that over the past four years, the federal government has increased its spending on average by about another $609.41 each year for every household in the country.

All of this useful information comes from our friends at CNSNews.com.

Don’t expect to hear it from CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, AP or any other news agency we euphemistically call “mainstream.”

“Mainstream media” are those that, in another saner time, would be called “official, state-run media.”

They are not watchdogs on the government. They are lapdogs for the government.

They are statist to the core. They never met a government program they didn’t like – unless it has something to do with defense of the nation, one of the very few responsibilities actually among those enumerated to Washington in the Constitution.

We’re in a world of hurt.

You hear much from the media and government these days about “sustainability.” They like that word as they apply it to the environment. But it doesn’t even enter their vocabulary when it comes to government spending.

Let me tell you something: If Barack Obama has his way, this is only the beginning. He’s got nearly four more years to devastate the U.S. economy and bankrupt the country.

That’s exactly where we are headed unless – and this is a big unless – the so-called “opposition party” grows some cojones.

Spending is set to be cut by $85 billion under the sequestration plan. You would think this signaled some apocalyptic event in the halls of Washington and the newsrooms of America.

In a $4 trillion spending plan, it doesn’t even represent a drop in the bucket.

It’s time to crank up the grass-roots lobbying effort – and I know of only one game in town. It’s the one that has so far delivered some 1.5 million red letters to House Republicans since 2011 urging a no vote on any more hikes in the debt limit.

Limited constitutional government is achievable one way – simply stop borrowing and force Washington to live within its means.

End borrowing and you end most of the egregiously unconstitutional programs, departments and agencies in Washington. You stop Obamacare cold in its tracks. You stop federal subsidies and mandates for abortion. You stop Planned Parenthood funding. You stop national Endowment for the Arts funding. You stop funding for the actual state-run media of NPR and PBS. You end the Department of Education.